HUMANICS AND THE HUMAN DILEMMA
The 1979 HUMANICS ADDRESS - SPRINGFIELD COLLEGE
Walter H. English
President Locklin, Dean Congdon, Members of the Faculty, Ladies and Gentlemen:
When Dean Congdon first called me into his office in the Spring of 1978 to inform me that, operating in the capacity of his office, he was conferring upon me the title of "Distinguished Springfield Professor of Humanics", I confess that I was awed. I'm sure I stammered some words of appreciation for the honor, realizing that mercifully there was a whole year before the responsibility which accompanied the title had to be met, namely, this address. I remember well the faculty meeting in the Fall of '78 when the announcement was made; it was met with something of a prolonged applause. Now, let's face it -- a prolonged applause can have one or more of several meanings. My first inclination was to interpret it as an endorsement of this recognition of merit; at least that's the way I hoped it was meant. And I was permitted to enjoy that state of euphoria for about five minutes, the time necessary to complete a few more announcements before the meeting was adjourned. I should have prized those few minutes and the rosy glow which engulfed me -- once again in retrospect I realize the truth of the statement that we never fully appreciate the here and now as we should. For immediately thereafter was sown the first (and hitherto unsuspected) seeds of doubt, uncertainty, bewilderment - almost a sort of paranoia that the world was out to "get" me. Some of my colleagues whose hands were still warm from applauding said to me, "That's great, Walt! Now what does it mean?" Others exclaimed, "Distinguished Professor of Humanics, eh? HAH!" One or two to whom I turned for reassurance, asking what Humanics really is, retorted, "Are you kidding?" Another response I remember was "Hey, that's your job - lotsa luck, fella!" And in the days that followed, I would be greeted with "How's the Extinguished Professor of Humanics these days?", an experience which raised the question in my mind of whether the substitution of adjectives was more than a bit of humor. Somehow there came to mind the grisly story of the convict taking the last walk to the electric chair. Accompanied with the usual escort of a guard and the chaplain, he was greeted by his fellow occupants of Death Row with words of encouragement, among which was the parting, "More power to you, Buddy!"
Fortunately for me, the same Dean Congdon had in his timetable the preparation of a book "Humanics - Inside Out in Writing". The publication of this collection of the papers by the five scholars who had held this same title over a period of 12 years (1966 to 1978) could not have been more opportune. Included in the same volume are contributions by others of the Springfield College faculty commenting on the same general topic. Permit me, in a few words, to describe the foci of the published observations of my distinguished predecessors. Dr. Seth Arsenian, in his three papers (1967, '68, and '69) wrote in turn of 1) the meaning of humanics, 2) a report of a study of changes in attitudes and values over a period of four years at Springfield College, and 3) a psychological interpretation of humanics and higher education. Dr. Harry Giles, in the first of his two studies ('71 and '72) entitled "Human Nature and Human Affairs", described how a college can gear its program to fit human needs and development, rather than mold students to a classical, out-worn tradition, or, as he wrote, "to implement the democratic purpose through institutional education". In his second paper he reviewed methods of humanistic design currently operating in other colleges, or, as his wryly humorous title stated, "Humanics at Work Among Friends and Enemies". The third scholar, Dr. Charles Weckworth, in the three years he held this title, collaborated with Dr. Barbara Jensen in a pilot study on the image of humanics at Springfield College, developing and utilizing a very sophisticated semantic differential instrument. Professor Holmes VanDerbeck in 1976 developed the thesis that Humanics is a practical action kind of philosophy. And the very popular Charles ("Red") Silvia concluded this even dozen years with a plea especially to his colleagues in physical education for adherence to principles of humanics even at the cost of victory.
Each of these papers is deserving of your attention; indeed, reading them will satisfy even the most research-minded academician. They are amply documented with footnotes and extensive bibliographies, and all show the reflections of the disciplines from which each author comes, psychology, human relations, recreation, religion, and the department of health, physical education, and recreation. On this occasion I have no desire or intention to amplify on the work, the thinking, the points of view which they have so admirably expressed. Indeed, I am of the conviction that little more that is new or different can be expressed; the writers have given analyses and definitions of the subject which have probed every possible dimension. Realizing this, I sought for a different approach, and, in a careless, unguarded moment I let slip to my friend Sean O'Connor a hint of how I planned to develop this talk. With his characteristic generosity he gave me a copy of a collection of some of his essays, in which I was horrified to see that my hopefully "novel" approach-to-be had already been used -- and, I might confess enviously, in that fluent manner and style which mark Sean's writings.
My interest has been caught less by what Humanics is and more by the reactions of individuals to the very mention of the term. My mind goes back to the early days of my full-time association with this College in 1969. Prior to my coming here, I had heard many derogatory and insulting terms in my lifetime -- as a matter of fact, many of them have been directed toward me. Similarly, I have experienced on many occasions tension-filled moments in certain sections of this country, especially if one was in the Armed Services. Yet never could I remember more passion-ridden tones than those which accompanied the epithets "jock" and "freak" as they were hurled across the tables of the collegium held for the airing and resolution of human relation problems on this very campus. (For the benefit of the more recent members of the faculty, let me explain that the terms were used to designate the members, both faculty and student, of HPE&R and Arts and Sciences respectively, and the local and national setting was the time when student uprisings and racial conflicts were shattering the calm of campuses across the land.) After the post-VietNam era a few efforts were made to disguise the distance (indeed, one might even call it the "hostility") between the two divisions, but no one could deny its existence. More recently the tensions have shifted from the horizontal to the vertical, and the rift between the faculty and administration is too wide to be ignored; it would be less than honest to claim that the current year has been ideal.
So here we are on a campus which in the ten years I have been here has been marked by conflicts of various types, student, racial, faculty-administration -- these operating at times separately or in concert. Yet this college claims a philosophy expressed in the term "Humanics", which, however deeply or broadly it is defined, is in essence the pursuit of learning for the betterment of mankind. The question comes again and again, "How can such a philosophy exist in such an environment?" No longer, I assert, can even the most cynical, would-be iconoclast deny its existence; its very persistence in emerging, if only once a year, is proof of its vitality and even indestructability.
Thus the subject -- "Humanics and the Human Dilemma". Oscar Wilde wrote:
"For all men kill the thing they love
By all let this be heard.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword".
This "love-hate" conflict has been the subject of countless books
poems, songs, and the like -- and still the cause escapes us all.
Is it because we are so convinced that our problems are so real that the presence of a ray of hope is unwelcome? Can a society plagued with energy shortages, strikes, inflation, crime, drugs, corruption, threats of war, etc. - can such a society even talk about human betterment without tongue in cheek? Does the cave despise the candle?
Perhaps a perception - maybe even an understanding - of this dilemma, this contradiction, may be gained in the study of three men. These were not Springfield College students, although they have been on the campus from the founding of the school. They were not - nor have they ever been - members of the faculty, staff, administration, board of trustees - yet they have never missed a single meeting.
The first one is a man named Joe - that's all - just Joe. He has no last name, but he has had several descriptive adjectives used with his name. He has been referred to as "a good Joe"; he has been the anonymous man in the street, "Joe Doakes" or "Joe Blow". In the services he was "G.I.Joe"; a few years ago he showed up in cartoons with his pork-pie hat and blazer as "Joe College". There was nothing really outstanding about him; he had no noteworthy virtues or crippling faults. He was - and is - an active being, operating somewhere between the heights of ecstacy and the depths of despair. We all know him; he is everywhere, but no directory carries his address. He is the "no-nonsense type - trustworthy, honest,dependable, the person who gets things done. He leaves policies, plans, designs, etc. to others; he works within the limits of what he is presented with - the tools, the budgets, the regulations. He knows the game and plays it by the rules.
The second of this trio is a gentleman named Thomas. Not "Tom" - one cannot get too familiar with him, and thus his name is not contracted to that single syllable. No - our man is Thomas. We first heard of him about two thousand years ago when he made a unforgettable name for himself; you will recall reading about how he refused to believe that Jesus Christ had been crucified until he had proof. It was he who wanted documentation at first hand by seeing the print of the nails, by putting his finger into the holes left by the nails, and by thrusting his hand into the wounds left by the spear of the soldier. This indeed was pure research, an activity which would achieve the validation needed without going through secondary sources. He was probably a man of sufficient education to have developed a questioning attitude about anything which was contrary to his reasoning; he was a pragmatic man. About him we know very little, and depending upon our orientation we think of him - if at all - with either a touch of sadness for his inability to perceive beyond his senses or a feeling of admiration for the consistency of his rational approach.
The last of our three men is Arthur, and here we are indebted to many writers over the years who have given us a good picture of him. Most of us first met him in our high school literature courses, and as the legendary King Arthur he and his cohorts became familiar figures. With them he had a dream of an idealized state, known to all of us as Camelot, and to this dream he devoted his life. We all remember his tragedy; he attributed to others those virtues which he hoped they had; he expected from them more than they could give. His pursuit, his ideals, his life style were,like pure gold, unfit for the wear and tear of daily use; they lacked the alloy of pragmatism. And so we shake our heads in sadness and disbelief that so intelligent, so admirable, so worthy a man could be so blind to the frailties of human nature.
Joe - Thomas -- Arthur - or if we wish to group them more euphonically, let's refer to them as Arthur, Thomas, and Joe. (That phrasing seems to slip off the tongue more easily!) And whereas the often-referred-to group of "Tom, Dick, and Harry" is spoken of with some disdain, I would suggest that Arthur, Thomas, and Joe are not "those guys out there" -- they are us. Or if we could paraphrase the title of a popular book and movie, these are the "three faces of Adam". In one of his papers, Dr. Arsenian coined the alliterative equivalents of the familiar humanics triangle of mind, body, and spirit as cognition, constitution, and character. In the same fashion I would suggest another set of translations for our trio, Arthur the dreamer, Thomas the doubter, and Joe the doer.
In Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar", Cassius uttered the memorable lines: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves". The derision, the tongue-in-cheek attitude which so often emerges when the idea of humanics is mentioned is less a statement of what exists than a revelation of the dimension of our own inner perception. We recall the blind men in the children's poem who went to see the elephant; the one who experienced the huge animal's leg concluded that the elephant was like a tree. Similarly the tail was felt to be like a rope, the ear like a fan, etc. And each one "knew" from his experience what the animal was like -- but no one was correct. The practical Joe, the doer, has his eyes set on the activities of every day existence. He is like another one-dimensioned individual who is the subject of another little ditty of long ago:
Solomon Grundy - born on Monday, Christened on Tuesday - married on Wednesday,
Took sick on Thursday - worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday - buried on Sunday,
And that was the end of Solomon Grundy.
What an existence - and with no meaningful purpose, no significant relationship, no contribution. What a pity! And, in his attempt to grasp the full dimension of humanics, Thomas also has his difficulties, operating as he does that whatever exists is measurable, that the cultivation of the mind to its fullest potential is the highest duty of mankind, and probably concluding that an institution of higher learning should be just that - and that only - dedicated to higher learning.
In many conversations both overheard and participated in, it has seemed to me that Thomas and Joe have little difficulty in at least tolerating each other. It is primarily when Arthur has something to say that the defenses go up - and the sparks fly. Let Arthur mention Camelot, and Joe and Thomas will want to know the location, the number of stories perhaps even the zip code. And the best answer that Arthur can give may be in one of Tennyson's "Idylls of the King", in which an old man tells the travelers searching for that ideal city:
"And here is truth ......
For truly ..... a fairy king
And fairy queens have built the city ...
They came from out a sacred mountain - cleft
Toward the sunrise, each with harp in hand,
And built it to the music of their harps.
And, as thou sayest, it is enchanted, son,
For there is nothing in it as it seems
Saving the King; though some there be that hold
The King a shadow, and the city real .....
And if ye heard a music, like enough
They are building still, seeing the city is built
To music, therefore never built at all,
And therefore built for ever...."
And indeed, like the travelers, when we are at a distance, we may catch a glimpse of Camelot through the clouds. Yet as we approach the vision fades, or - worse still - is seen to be a distortion of what is really there. Not only then do we believe that it does not exist, but we begin to distrust the potential existence of this or any other dream. This indeed is the human dilemma - the existence within each of us of forces which are intended to be complementary but which become antagonistic. We attempt in the concepts of Transactional Analysis to communicate on parallel levels to make sure that when a Thomas speaks he is responded to by another Thomas, and Joe by Joe. But when we shut out Arthur from the conversation, or admit him with reservations, we diminish all three. I believe that Allen Sherman had this exclusion in mind when he wrote these words for a beautiful and meaningful song:
"You're born - you weep - you smile - you sleep - You cling - you crawl - you stand - you fall - You stand again and try - and then you walk.
You eat - you drink - you feel - you think -
You play - you grow - you learn - you know -
And then one day you find a way to talk.
You're young - you fly - you laugh - you cry
You've grown - you're on your own at last.
You lose - you win - your days begin to slip away too fast.....too fast.
Too soon you hear a distant drum,
Too soon the time to go will come,
And time won't wait. It is too late to ask:
Did I ever love? Did I ever give?
Did I ever really live?"
This has been a difficult year for humanics. Any year when such realities as budget cuts, program curtailments, faculty and staff reductions, restructuring of priorities, tuition increases, spiraling effects of inflation, etc. come into head-on conflict with our desires as a college and as individuals - such a year is stressful. Arthur, Thomas, and Joe have had difficulty in communicating. Even now, as you listen to me, there are those who cannot accept not just the validity, but even the existence of our Camelot. Yet the commitment to the institutional embodiment of a dream we call "humanics" - the fusion of the elements of body, mind, and spirit into a working philosophy - that commitment (to refer t o Tennyson's poem again) requires vows
"...as is a shame
A man should not be bound by, yet the which
No man can keep ......"
It is not whether humanics is, or should be, or can exist, or is a myth - these are not the questions to be asked. Thus the poet continues:
"...........but if thou dread to swear
Pass not beneath this gateway, but abide
Without, among the cattle of the field".
To me the question is a simple one: can we afford not to bring up every year this basic philosophy for a reaffirmation? Can we run the risk of ignoring that one element that not only makes this college unique but indeed gives it a reason for being? Can we afford to let the gleam of hope flicker and die, to have the candle blown out by the harsh winds of a reality that puts life ahead of living, that puts existence ahead of essence?
I think not. I'll grant that the mention of humanics at a time when gasoline is approaching the price of one dollar a gallon may seem somewhat out of place. And those who follow me in this appointment may find such a mention in the locus of succeeding years equally inappropriate. Yet there is no choice; Arthur, Thomas, and Joe must still - now and forever - find a seat at the table. And it may be that we at Springfield College - as well as those who come after us - will never become that which we would
be. So what? Robert Browning put it best:
"A man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a Heaven for?"

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HUMANICS AND THE HUMAN DILEMMA
The 1979 HUMANICS ADDRESS - SPRINGFIELD COLLEGE
Walter H. English
President Locklin, Dean Congdon, Members of the Faculty, Ladies and Gentlemen:
When Dean Congdon first called me into his office in the Spring of 1978 to inform me that, operating in the capacity of his office, he was conferring upon me the title of "Distinguished Springfield Professor of Humanics", I confess that I was awed. I'm sure I stammered some words of appreciation for the honor, realizing that mercifully there was a whole year before the responsibility which accompanied the title had to be met, namely, this address. I remember well the faculty meeting in the Fall of '78 when the announcement was made; it was met with something of a prolonged applause. Now, let's face it -- a prolonged applause can have one or more of several meanings. My first inclination was to interpret it as an endorsement of this recognition of merit; at least that's the way I hoped it was meant. And I was permitted to enjoy that state of euphoria for about five minutes, the time necessary to complete a few more announcements before the meeting was adjourned. I should have prized those few minutes and the rosy glow which engulfed me -- once again in retrospect I realize the truth of the statement that we never fully appreciate the here and now as we should. For immediately thereafter was sown the first (and hitherto unsuspected) seeds of doubt, uncertainty, bewilderment - almost a sort of paranoia that the world was out to "get" me. Some of my colleagues whose hands were still warm from applauding said to me, "That's great, Walt! Now what does it mean?" Others exclaimed, "Distinguished Professor of Humanics, eh? HAH!" One or two to whom I turned for reassurance, asking what Humanics really is, retorted, "Are you kidding?" Another response I remember was "Hey, that's your job - lotsa luck, fella!" And in the days that followed, I would be greeted with "How's the Extinguished Professor of Humanics these days?", an experience which raised the question in my mind of whether the substitution of adjectives was more than a bit of humor. Somehow there came to mind the grisly story of the convict taking the last walk to the electric chair. Accompanied with the usual escort of a guard and the chaplain, he was greeted by his fellow occupants of Death Row with words of encouragement, among which was the parting, "More power to you, Buddy!"
Fortunately for me, the same Dean Congdon had in his timetable the preparation of a book "Humanics - Inside Out in Writing". The publication of this collection of the papers by the five scholars who had held this same title over a period of 12 years (1966 to 1978) could not have been more opportune. Included in the same volume are contributions by others of the Springfield College faculty commenting on the same general topic. Permit me, in a few words, to describe the foci of the published observations of my distinguished predecessors. Dr. Seth Arsenian, in his three papers (1967, '68, and '69) wrote in turn of 1) the meaning of humanics, 2) a report of a study of changes in attitudes and values over a period of four years at Springfield College, and 3) a psychological interpretation of humanics and higher education. Dr. Harry Giles, in the first of his two studies ('71 and '72) entitled "Human Nature and Human Affairs", described how a college can gear its program to fit human needs and development, rather than mold students to a classical, out-worn tradition, or, as he wrote, "to implement the democratic purpose through institutional education". In his second paper he reviewed methods of humanistic design currently operating in other colleges, or, as his wryly humorous title stated, "Humanics at Work Among Friends and Enemies". The third scholar, Dr. Charles Weckworth, in the three years he held this title, collaborated with Dr. Barbara Jensen in a pilot study on the image of humanics at Springfield College, developing and utilizing a very sophisticated semantic differential instrument. Professor Holmes VanDerbeck in 1976 developed the thesis that Humanics is a practical action kind of philosophy. And the very popular Charles ("Red") Silvia concluded this even dozen years with a plea especially to his colleagues in physical education for adherence to principles of humanics even at the cost of victory.
Each of these papers is deserving of your attention; indeed, reading them will satisfy even the most research-minded academician. They are amply documented with footnotes and extensive bibliographies, and all show the reflections of the disciplines from which each author comes, psychology, human relations, recreation, religion, and the department of health, physical education, and recreation. On this occasion I have no desire or intention to amplify on the work, the thinking, the points of view which they have so admirably expressed. Indeed, I am of the conviction that little more that is new or different can be expressed; the writers have given analyses and definitions of the subject which have probed every possible dimension. Realizing this, I sought for a different approach, and, in a careless, unguarded moment I let slip to my friend Sean O'Connor a hint of how I planned to develop this talk. With his characteristic generosity he gave me a copy of a collection of some of his essays, in which I was horrified to see that my hopefully "novel" approach-to-be had already been used -- and, I might confess enviously, in that fluent manner and style which mark Sean's writings.
My interest has been caught less by what Humanics is and more by the reactions of individuals to the very mention of the term. My mind goes back to the early days of my full-time association with this College in 1969. Prior to my coming here, I had heard many derogatory and insulting terms in my lifetime -- as a matter of fact, many of them have been directed toward me. Similarly, I have experienced on many occasions tension-filled moments in certain sections of this country, especially if one was in the Armed Services. Yet never could I remember more passion-ridden tones than those which accompanied the epithets "jock" and "freak" as they were hurled across the tables of the collegium held for the airing and resolution of human relation problems on this very campus. (For the benefit of the more recent members of the faculty, let me explain that the terms were used to designate the members, both faculty and student, of HPE&R and Arts and Sciences respectively, and the local and national setting was the time when student uprisings and racial conflicts were shattering the calm of campuses across the land.) After the post-VietNam era a few efforts were made to disguise the distance (indeed, one might even call it the "hostility") between the two divisions, but no one could deny its existence. More recently the tensions have shifted from the horizontal to the vertical, and the rift between the faculty and administration is too wide to be ignored; it would be less than honest to claim that the current year has been ideal.
So here we are on a campus which in the ten years I have been here has been marked by conflicts of various types, student, racial, faculty-administration -- these operating at times separately or in concert. Yet this college claims a philosophy expressed in the term "Humanics", which, however deeply or broadly it is defined, is in essence the pursuit of learning for the betterment of mankind. The question comes again and again, "How can such a philosophy exist in such an environment?" No longer, I assert, can even the most cynical, would-be iconoclast deny its existence; its very persistence in emerging, if only once a year, is proof of its vitality and even indestructability.
Thus the subject -- "Humanics and the Human Dilemma". Oscar Wilde wrote:
"For all men kill the thing they love
By all let this be heard.
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword".
This "love-hate" conflict has been the subject of countless books
poems, songs, and the like -- and still the cause escapes us all.
Is it because we are so convinced that our problems are so real that the presence of a ray of hope is unwelcome? Can a society plagued with energy shortages, strikes, inflation, crime, drugs, corruption, threats of war, etc. - can such a society even talk about human betterment without tongue in cheek? Does the cave despise the candle?
Perhaps a perception - maybe even an understanding - of this dilemma, this contradiction, may be gained in the study of three men. These were not Springfield College students, although they have been on the campus from the founding of the school. They were not - nor have they ever been - members of the faculty, staff, administration, board of trustees - yet they have never missed a single meeting.
The first one is a man named Joe - that's all - just Joe. He has no last name, but he has had several descriptive adjectives used with his name. He has been referred to as "a good Joe"; he has been the anonymous man in the street, "Joe Doakes" or "Joe Blow". In the services he was "G.I.Joe"; a few years ago he showed up in cartoons with his pork-pie hat and blazer as "Joe College". There was nothing really outstanding about him; he had no noteworthy virtues or crippling faults. He was - and is - an active being, operating somewhere between the heights of ecstacy and the depths of despair. We all know him; he is everywhere, but no directory carries his address. He is the "no-nonsense type - trustworthy, honest,dependable, the person who gets things done. He leaves policies, plans, designs, etc. to others; he works within the limits of what he is presented with - the tools, the budgets, the regulations. He knows the game and plays it by the rules.
The second of this trio is a gentleman named Thomas. Not "Tom" - one cannot get too familiar with him, and thus his name is not contracted to that single syllable. No - our man is Thomas. We first heard of him about two thousand years ago when he made a unforgettable name for himself; you will recall reading about how he refused to believe that Jesus Christ had been crucified until he had proof. It was he who wanted documentation at first hand by seeing the print of the nails, by putting his finger into the holes left by the nails, and by thrusting his hand into the wounds left by the spear of the soldier. This indeed was pure research, an activity which would achieve the validation needed without going through secondary sources. He was probably a man of sufficient education to have developed a questioning attitude about anything which was contrary to his reasoning; he was a pragmatic man. About him we know very little, and depending upon our orientation we think of him - if at all - with either a touch of sadness for his inability to perceive beyond his senses or a feeling of admiration for the consistency of his rational approach.
The last of our three men is Arthur, and here we are indebted to many writers over the years who have given us a good picture of him. Most of us first met him in our high school literature courses, and as the legendary King Arthur he and his cohorts became familiar figures. With them he had a dream of an idealized state, known to all of us as Camelot, and to this dream he devoted his life. We all remember his tragedy; he attributed to others those virtues which he hoped they had; he expected from them more than they could give. His pursuit, his ideals, his life style were,like pure gold, unfit for the wear and tear of daily use; they lacked the alloy of pragmatism. And so we shake our heads in sadness and disbelief that so intelligent, so admirable, so worthy a man could be so blind to the frailties of human nature.
Joe - Thomas -- Arthur - or if we wish to group them more euphonically, let's refer to them as Arthur, Thomas, and Joe. (That phrasing seems to slip off the tongue more easily!) And whereas the often-referred-to group of "Tom, Dick, and Harry" is spoken of with some disdain, I would suggest that Arthur, Thomas, and Joe are not "those guys out there" -- they are us. Or if we could paraphrase the title of a popular book and movie, these are the "three faces of Adam". In one of his papers, Dr. Arsenian coined the alliterative equivalents of the familiar humanics triangle of mind, body, and spirit as cognition, constitution, and character. In the same fashion I would suggest another set of translations for our trio, Arthur the dreamer, Thomas the doubter, and Joe the doer.
In Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar", Cassius uttered the memorable lines: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves". The derision, the tongue-in-cheek attitude which so often emerges when the idea of humanics is mentioned is less a statement of what exists than a revelation of the dimension of our own inner perception. We recall the blind men in the children's poem who went to see the elephant; the one who experienced the huge animal's leg concluded that the elephant was like a tree. Similarly the tail was felt to be like a rope, the ear like a fan, etc. And each one "knew" from his experience what the animal was like -- but no one was correct. The practical Joe, the doer, has his eyes set on the activities of every day existence. He is like another one-dimensioned individual who is the subject of another little ditty of long ago:
Solomon Grundy - born on Monday, Christened on Tuesday - married on Wednesday,
Took sick on Thursday - worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday - buried on Sunday,
And that was the end of Solomon Grundy.
What an existence - and with no meaningful purpose, no significant relationship, no contribution. What a pity! And, in his attempt to grasp the full dimension of humanics, Thomas also has his difficulties, operating as he does that whatever exists is measurable, that the cultivation of the mind to its fullest potential is the highest duty of mankind, and probably concluding that an institution of higher learning should be just that - and that only - dedicated to higher learning.
In many conversations both overheard and participated in, it has seemed to me that Thomas and Joe have little difficulty in at least tolerating each other. It is primarily when Arthur has something to say that the defenses go up - and the sparks fly. Let Arthur mention Camelot, and Joe and Thomas will want to know the location, the number of stories perhaps even the zip code. And the best answer that Arthur can give may be in one of Tennyson's "Idylls of the King", in which an old man tells the travelers searching for that ideal city:
"And here is truth ......
For truly ..... a fairy king
And fairy queens have built the city ...
They came from out a sacred mountain - cleft
Toward the sunrise, each with harp in hand,
And built it to the music of their harps.
And, as thou sayest, it is enchanted, son,
For there is nothing in it as it seems
Saving the King; though some there be that hold
The King a shadow, and the city real .....
And if ye heard a music, like enough
They are building still, seeing the city is built
To music, therefore never built at all,
And therefore built for ever...."
And indeed, like the travelers, when we are at a distance, we may catch a glimpse of Camelot through the clouds. Yet as we approach the vision fades, or - worse still - is seen to be a distortion of what is really there. Not only then do we believe that it does not exist, but we begin to distrust the potential existence of this or any other dream. This indeed is the human dilemma - the existence within each of us of forces which are intended to be complementary but which become antagonistic. We attempt in the concepts of Transactional Analysis to communicate on parallel levels to make sure that when a Thomas speaks he is responded to by another Thomas, and Joe by Joe. But when we shut out Arthur from the conversation, or admit him with reservations, we diminish all three. I believe that Allen Sherman had this exclusion in mind when he wrote these words for a beautiful and meaningful song:
"You're born - you weep - you smile - you sleep - You cling - you crawl - you stand - you fall - You stand again and try - and then you walk.
You eat - you drink - you feel - you think -
You play - you grow - you learn - you know -
And then one day you find a way to talk.
You're young - you fly - you laugh - you cry
You've grown - you're on your own at last.
You lose - you win - your days begin to slip away too fast.....too fast.
Too soon you hear a distant drum,
Too soon the time to go will come,
And time won't wait. It is too late to ask:
Did I ever love? Did I ever give?
Did I ever really live?"
This has been a difficult year for humanics. Any year when such realities as budget cuts, program curtailments, faculty and staff reductions, restructuring of priorities, tuition increases, spiraling effects of inflation, etc. come into head-on conflict with our desires as a college and as individuals - such a year is stressful. Arthur, Thomas, and Joe have had difficulty in communicating. Even now, as you listen to me, there are those who cannot accept not just the validity, but even the existence of our Camelot. Yet the commitment to the institutional embodiment of a dream we call "humanics" - the fusion of the elements of body, mind, and spirit into a working philosophy - that commitment (to refer t o Tennyson's poem again) requires vows
"...as is a shame
A man should not be bound by, yet the which
No man can keep ......"
It is not whether humanics is, or should be, or can exist, or is a myth - these are not the questions to be asked. Thus the poet continues:
"...........but if thou dread to swear
Pass not beneath this gateway, but abide
Without, among the cattle of the field".
To me the question is a simple one: can we afford not to bring up every year this basic philosophy for a reaffirmation? Can we run the risk of ignoring that one element that not only makes this college unique but indeed gives it a reason for being? Can we afford to let the gleam of hope flicker and die, to have the candle blown out by the harsh winds of a reality that puts life ahead of living, that puts existence ahead of essence?
I think not. I'll grant that the mention of humanics at a time when gasoline is approaching the price of one dollar a gallon may seem somewhat out of place. And those who follow me in this appointment may find such a mention in the locus of succeeding years equally inappropriate. Yet there is no choice; Arthur, Thomas, and Joe must still - now and forever - find a seat at the table. And it may be that we at Springfield College - as well as those who come after us - will never become that which we would
be. So what? Robert Browning put it best:
"A man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a Heaven for?"

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